North Korea acquires key components needed to enrich uranium

North Korea appears to have beaten international sanctions to acquire the technical capability to produce key components for centrifuges used to enrich uranium for its nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea has also dramatically increased the size of the uranium enrichment facility at its Yongbyon nuclear plantPhoto: AP Photo/Jon Chol Jin

By Julian Ryall in Tokyo

5:30AM BST 24 Sep 2013

The estimations by two US nuclear experts are in line with a report by the Institute for Science and International Security in August that suggested that North Korea has dramatically increased the size of the uranium enrichment facility at its Yongbyon nuclear plant.

More recent satellite images indicate that North Korea has started procedures to restart the reactor at the facility.

In an interview with Japan's Kyodo News, Joshua Pollack, an expert on nuclear proliferation, said it is likely that the North has been able to make powerful rare-earth magnets that are used in high-performance centrifuges, an extremely hard steel alloy known as maraging steel, vacuum pumps and frequency inverters that control the speed of the electric motor at the base of a centrifuge.

"The evidence is quite strong that they have been moving in this direction," said Mr Pollack, who monitored academic theses, patent documents and news reports with Scott Kemp, an assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr Pollack is due to present his findings and conclusions at a conference in Seoul later this week.

"Up to a point, it is possible to get around sanctions if the North is determined enough as they will only serve to increase the cost of goods and services," Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at the Japan campus of Temple University, told The Daily Telegraph.

The analysts' reports coincide with new satellite images provided by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University that suggest North Korea tested an improved long-range rocket engine in late August at the Sohae satellite launching facility.

The reappearance of Pak To-chun in public in North Korea is causing further concern in Seoul and Washington. Absent since May, the head of Pyongyang's missile and nuclear projects was assumed to have shouldered the blame for setbacks in the development of the North's weapons programmes.

Pak's return to favour has been interpreted as a signal that the problems have been overcome and that the North might be gearing up for a new missile launch, in defiance of United Nations sanctions.